Family worries: Assessment of interpersonal anxiety in children from violent and nonviolent families

Assessed children's worries about the behaviors of significant people in the family with a new measure that focused on both the target of the worry and the types of behavior that worry the child. One hundred twenty-one 7 to 12-year-old in families with and without domestic violence rated, on a 4-point scale ranging form 1 (not a lot) to 4 (a lot) how much they worried about 20 behaviors concerning five people in the family: mother, father, brother, sister, and self. Varimax analyses provided two factors - Vulnerable and Harmful - that indicate worry about the vulnerable and harmful behavior of each family member. The measure has acceptable internal and test-retest reliability, as well as known-groups validity. Children in the domestic violence families were significantly more worried about the vulnerability of their mothers, brothers, and sisters, and they tended to worry more about the harmful behavior of their fathers than did children in the comparison group. Significant associations were found, for the children of battered women, between child adjustment and worry about the harmful behavior of family members.